As the months drag on into autumn and then into winter, the Embassy protesters lose none of their conviction, nor their anger. Although they leave — for jobs, families, other cities — there is reunion around the tents on the weekends, and talk of land rights in the air. And when the protestors come together to discuss their goals, there is talk of other things too. They know that the tents are a devastating visual reminder of the aftermath of dispossession, and they know that ‘land rights’ and ‘civil rights’ are intimately connected. If you were to pass by the Embassy during these months, a staffer might hand you a flyer listing a broad range of concerns. You might learn of an ‘Aboriginal Embassy Manifesto’, which begins by asking whether Aborigines have ‘received a fair deal’ in return for losing their land. It points to inequalities in education, wages and the law, as well as extremely high mortality statistics. Or, you might chance across an information sheet titled ‘Why an Embassy?’ It begins with a denunciation of the government’s policy on land, but moves swiftly to paint a picture of Aboriginal living conditions — high unemployment and infant mortality, malnutrition, gonorrhoea, scurvy, tuberculosis, gastroenteritis and trachoma. ^[38]

To attempt to deal with these problems, many of the Embassy campaigners are actively involved in ‘community survival programs’ in inner-city Sydney. As much as their commitment to land rights, it is their daily confrontation with poverty and racial oppression that binds them. One of these activists is Gary Foley. From Nambucca Heads in northern New South Wales, he has been a significant figure in the Black Power movement in Sydney for several years. He also loves a good argument. When an elderly White woman approaches him one day as he is lying on the Embassy lawns, full of moralistic advice for the demonstrators, it is all the encouragement he needs. ‘Listen! Lemme tell you something!’ He jabs his finger at her. ‘We’ve done alright in the past two years in Sydney without people like you. And we’re going to do alright for a long time to come. We’re going to get our bloody land, even if we have to fucking well take it!’ ^[39]